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« on: June 03, 2016, 04:32:09 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 6-3-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest
Jun. 3, 2016
THE FOUNDATION
“Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.” —John Adams (1808.)
Mourning With Our Armed Forces1
Thursday was a particularly tragic day for the U.S. military. While our own Mark Alexander celebrated the graduation of his son from the U.S. Air Force Academy, one of the Thunderbirds conducting the traditional flyover later crashed. The pilot safely ejected just before putting his F-16 down in a field.
Not so fortunate, however, was a Blue Angels pilot killed in a crash while practicing for the Great Tennessee Airshow in Nashville this weekend. Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss went down with his F/A-18, almost surely to save civilian lives by maintaining control of where the plane crashed. He leaves behind a wife and two young children. “It’s hard to put into words right now, but it’s beautiful that a person can live and die engaged in their life’s pursuits,” said his grandfather, Dolph Kuss. “This was his dream since he was a child, to be an aviator, a flier.”
“I started flying when I was a young kid,” Capt. Kuss said in a video the Navy posted last year2. “I always had a love for it, worked really hard through school, went to college and eventually got into the military. I wanted to fly the fastest, meanest thing I could. And that’s why I’m here today, because I was fortunate enough to get to fly the F-18 Hornet. It’s been a great experience every time I strap into it.”
Godspeed, Captain.
Finally, in Fort Hood, Texas, at least five soldiers perished when their truck overturned in raging flood waters. Four more are missing, and rescuers are still searching.
Our Armed Forces personnel face daily danger, and thousands have given their lives in fighting for our nation abroad. That’s why we end each edition with this note: Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families.
Thursday’s striking events are a pointed reminder that such prayers are always needed, even when service personnel are close to home.
TOP RIGHT HOOKS
King Obama Will Really Miss Air Force One3
During his remarks to the graduating cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Barack Obama’s insulting and out-of-touch attitude toward our nation’s warriors was on full display. He praised the Air Force for, well, being great air stewards, telling its cadets, “You take good care of me. You are always on time. You never lose my luggage. I don’t have to take off my shoes before I get on. So I am really going to miss Air Force One, as well as the incredible airmen that I’ve come to know.”
Where to start? Air Force One has become a symbol of Obama’s decadence4 — he’s living like royalty at taxpayer expense. In mid-2014, the cost to jet Obama around reached5 the half-billion-dollar mark. We’ll never begrudge a sitting president the travel that’s required for managing the affairs of the state, but Obama’s lavish fundraising runs6 and media appearances7 have long been over the top — especially where the first family could have flown together but chose to fly separately. (For the record, flying Air Force One for an hour costs taxpayers about $228,000. And while this may seem like chump change to those who note that our national debt has surpassed $19 trillion, the behavior is symptomatic of Obama’s profligacy.)
Perhaps it was only fitting, then, for the commander in chief who has used the military as a petri dish for all sorts of social experiments to thank our warriors not for their sacrifice but for keeping track of his luggage.
In February, Obama said in a television appearance, “I don’t miss flying commercial, taking your shoes off and all that.” Newsflash: While Obama is burning millions in taxpayers' money on flight, thousands of Americans are missing their commercial flights because the TSA cannot screen travelers in a timely manner8. What a let-them-eat-cake moment.
No Good Jobs in the May Jobs Report9
The only jobs added to Barack Obama’s economy in May were the ones created by government regulation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released what Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey calls10 the worst report in five years. Indeed, the numbers are bad: Only 38,000 jobs were added in May. The number of Americans who are doing part-time work when they want a full-time position increased by almost a half million. The percentage of Americans who are gainfully employed shrunk by 0.2 points and now only 62.6% of the population is holding down a job. That last statistic is why BLS could spin the numbers to say the unemployment rate declined to 4.7%.
According to BLS data, the lone industry to grow in May was the health care industry — an industry that’s growing only because ObamaCare regulations11 are forcing Americans to spend more of their money in the industry. Ahead of the jobs report, Obama visited Elkhart, Indiana12, to tout his seven years of bringing a statist touch to the economy. It was from Elkhart in 2009 that Obama argued for a stimulus bill to flood the well-connected businesses of the nation with cash. Friday’s jobs report is a reminder of just how lackluster the “recovery” has been, thanks to his policies.
The ray of hope in the jobs report is that wages increased by five cents in May, so the average hourly wage is $25.59 an hour. Wages are still slowly growing, which might increase consumer spending, which might help revive the economy. But GDP grew13 just 0.5% in the first quarter of 2016, and this jobs report hints that the second will be equally anemic.
BEST OF RIGHT OPINION
Todd Starnes: Boykin Bounced: Fort Riley Cancels Hero’s Prayer Breakfast Speech14
Caroline Camden Lewis: The Therapists Win in the Bathroom Debate15
Jonah Goldberg: Katie Couric, More Reality TV Star Than Real Journalist16
For more, visit Right Opinion17.
FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Foreign Policy Suddenly Makes a Difference18
By Michael Swartz
Graduates of the Air Force Academy, including the son of our publisher, Mark Alexander, endured their commander in chief’s final service academy commencement address19 Thursday. Barack Obama made the case that these graduates would be joining the world’s strongest military, which is true, albeit less true than eight years ago. But he also warned of the “false comfort” that an isolationist foreign policy would create.
Yet while Obama broke his 35-minute address down into several lessons he claimed to have learned during his time in the Oval Office, the only real mistake he admitted to was in Libya: “We were right to launch an air campaign to prevent [Moammar] Gadhafi from massacring innocent civilians,” said Obama, “but we didn’t do enough to plan for the day after, when deep-rooted tribalism plunged Libya into disorder.”
That’s putting it mildly.
If Obama can only think of one mistake, we can note others. There are any number of military experts and other observers, including those in our humble shop20, who believe that creating a vacuum by premature withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan — the former as a cynical re-election ploy to make the case that “al-Qaida is on the run” — also led those nations into “disorder” caused by a resurgent Islamic terror state Obama once dismissed as the “JV team.”
Yet Obama claims to have drawn the opposite lesson. “We’ve learned,” Obama pontificated Thursday, “that often the best way to defeat terrorists is not by sending large numbers of American ground forces to occupy and patrol foreign cities and towns. It’s better to train and build up local partners — they’re the ones who have to stabilize their own countries over the long term.” That wasn’t the message he sent in 2011, when he embraced the isolationism of leaving the “local partners” of Iraq to the wolves of radical Islam, fearing that fighting them in place might cost him another term. |
